10 Best Guided Bike Tours in the USA

It’s no secret that biking is the best way to get to know a place. You see the sights at the right pace, travel like a local, and you can easily stop to explore. Plus, because you’re burning calories as you ride, you can eat your way around town. Although getting lost can be part of the fun of any journey, if you only have a little time to discover a landscape and the people who shape it, let the experts take you off the beaten path—with lobster rolls, tacos, po’boys, BBQ and beer. A guide does the planning for you, so you have more time to ride.

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New Orleans Culinary Bike Tour

“You can eat a cup of gumbo at a restaurant or you can come with us and learn why we eat gumbo,” says Jeff Shyman, who founded Confederacy of Cruisers in 2007. The company leads several bike excursions with topics ranging from Creole to cocktails to Hurricane Katrina. His guided culinary tour gives a well-rounded taste of the city. Up to eight riders per group will hear about the French, African, and Native American influences, the different styles and ingredients, how to make signature dishes at home, and the best spots to enjoy New Orleans cooking. The roughly four-hour ride covers 12 miles along flat roads and stops at places like Liuzza's for gumbo, the Parkway Bakery for po’boys, and Angelo Brocato’s for traditional Sicilian desserts.

If you’re visiting the city with the most breweries in the world (53 at last count), this is the tour to book, according to the expert on all things beer and biking in Portland, Hops in the Saddle author Lucy Burningham. Throughout the three-hour, 5-mile ride, you’ll drink in the sights and suds of downtown, pedaling past a dozen breweries and tasting at three of them—including the oldest brewery, Bridgeport, and local favorite, the Lucky Lab. You’ll finish the ride with a pint at Pedal Bike Tours headquarters.

With a striking skyline and snow-covered mountain ranges, Seattle is just as wonderful from a distance as it is from close up. You’ll get to experience a bit of downtown on two wheels before hopping a ferry, bike in tow, across Elliott Bay towards the hills and thrills of Bainbridge Island. En route, take in the sweeping views of the Olympic Mountains, Cascade Range, Mt. Rainier, and downtown Seattle. Riders navigate the island on 21-speed commuter bikes for five-hour tour that owner Craig Scheak created because “so many people are now choosing to travel by bike when they visit a city.” Bainbridge is the size of Manhattan, but with a population of 29,000, and it’s rich in WWII history—and, in season, blackberries. After some challenging climbs, the guided tour will pause at the farmers’ market for local cheese, Café D’amore for a French pastry, and Point White to glimpse bald eagles nesting and seals sunning before going back to the ferry, where cyclists always board and exit first.

A coastal bike ride is rewarding enough, but when you’re in Maine, there is nothing quite like a fresh lobster roll—or three—to put a smile on your face as you roll along the rocky beaches. In between buttery bites, highlights during this 32-mile tour include an off-the-beaten-path spin to Cousins Island, well-paved scenic roads beside the ocean, and Portland Head Light, a lighthouse immortalized by Edward Hopper. The experience may only last a day, but the tastes and turns of this bike tour are sure to stay with you long after returning home.

The next best thing to hiking the Grand Canyon is biking the rim. While following this 6-mile car-free route out west, past Hopi Point, Mohave Point, Monument Creek Vista, and Pima Point, you’ll learn fascinating historical and geological facts about the creation of the canyon, its first settlers, the many animals that roam the national park, and how Native Americans relied on local plants. Toward the end of the day, post-tour, grab an iced mocha and sandwich at the Bright Angel Bicycles’ café and watch the sunset light up the canyon.

Art Palacios, an artist and former pawnbroker who led popular underground urban bike rides Beastside Mosey and Midnight Ridazz for years, launched LA Cycle Tours in the summer of 2013. “My focus was to stay away from the generic Hollywood tourism traps where they take you to the manicured side of the city,” says Art. “I want to show people the real side of Los Angeles.” The Taco Tour takes up to 10 riders along 9 miles of downtown LA, where riders are treated to an eye-opening tale of two cities, told through gentrifying neighborhoods, local characters, like a guitar maker and a mariachi tailor, and the food, including Puebla Mexican cemita sandwiches, fish tacos, and meat samplers for the adventurous carnivores. You might come for the all-you-can-eat-tacos, but there is much more to feast your eyes on than carne asada.

“Think of it as a ride with friends followed by a fantastic intimate dinner party,” says Lisa Markuson of Get Up and Ride. After a breezy 90-minute journey through Greenpoint and Williamsburg, stopping at the Transmitter Park pier, McCarren Park, and Marlow & Daughters to chat with the butcher about the evening’s locavore meal, guests will leave their Linus and Public bikes at North Brooklyn Farms and head upstairs to a long table in the sky. Here, on a green roof with a view of the Williamsburg Bridge, you can expect to find chef Shane McGarvey preparing something like crispy grilled baby octopus with spicy lemon vinaigrette, smoky grilled chicken slow cooked over hickory with garlic scape chimichurri, and orzo salad with grilled asparagus and fiddleheads. The dinner is then paired with beer, wine, and stimulating conversation by candlelight.

Even a casual admirer of architecture will enjoy this tour through Oak Park, home to the largest concentration of Frank Lloyd Wright-designed houses in the world. Up to 10 people per bike tour will pedal past 22 structures, including Wright’s own former residence. Along the way, you’ll trace the evolution of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie-style works through early examples from the late 1800s, as well as his fully formed Prairie homes, which emerged in the early 1900s. Tour participants receive a buy-one-get-one-free coupon for admission to the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio.

Grand Teton National Park is a place you’ll struggle to leave. You can hike up a mountain one day and kayak below it the next, picnic in the grass near grazing bison, unsure of why you’re eating so close to a pile of dung, and still you want more of it all. If you have only a little time in the Greater Jackson Hole area, this two-part guided bike tour offers just enough adventure to let you leave feeling satisfied with the wild collection of memories from a whitewater rafting trip down the Class II/III Snake River and a mountain bike ride through the Antelope Flats.

The secret is out about Long Island’s North Fork, but there are still ways of escaping the crowds during the summer high season. Pour and Pedal operates bike tours in New Jersey and the North Fork, where their unique close relationships with vineyards like Pellegrini’s, Raphael, Lenz Winery, and Pugliese mean you get to cruise through the vines, stomp and harvest the grapes, and enjoy barrel room tastings, discounts, and private tours. Along with the mini wine degree you’ll feel like you’ve received, you’ll leave full from lunch, catered by Love Lane Kitchen.

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